I couldn’t help but be struck by the interesting re-telling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, by Robert Zemeckis, Neil Gaiman, and Roger Avary. They kept the basic story intact, but added a twist with Grendel’s mother and more subtle characters. In fact, the theme of fatherhood in the time of heroes was nicely problematized: the [...]
Tag Archives: myth
Xenia: A Religious Duty
Today’s visitors to Greece are often struck by the generous hospitality of the people. An ancient tradition lies behind the traveler’s welcome in Greece — and it is a tradition that was fundamentally religious before it became a part of social custom.
The Epic Hero
The epic hero has a double role. He (there are no epical woman heroes as far as I know) is an individual person with an habitual virtue from which his exploits flow, and he is representative of the group to whom the exploit is important.
Eliot and the Mythic Method
Eliot defines what he exemplifies in The Waste Land — i.e. the “mythic method” — in his essay “Ulysses, Order, and Myth.” The mythic method looked to the past to glean meaning and understanding for what has been lost or destroyed in the present.
I Don’t Feel at Home Where I Am
I don’t feel at home where I am,or where I spend time; only where,beyond counting, there’s freedom and calm,that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,to pebbles and sand … where life’s mean-ing lies buried, that never let onecome within cannon shot [...]
Revisionary Mythmaking
Adrienne Rich’s essay “When We Dead Awaken” is about what it means to be a woman, and the battles they must fight to write today. It is an essay about revisionary mythmaking and the process Rich had to undergo to define her own idiom as a woman writer. She begins her theme by showing how [...]
